Over the next two weeks, we’ll be taking a look back at the fine art competitions that originated in ancient Greece and were revived as part of the modern Olympics from 1912 to 1948.

Amsterdam Opening Ceremonies, 1928/

The 1928 Games in Amsterdam would be the first of the modern Olympiad without Baron Pierre de Coubertin running the show. Would the art competition survive without its primary proponent?

Carrying the Torch

The Amsterdam Organizing Committee took special care to carry on the tradition established by Coubertin, who retired as IOC president after the 1924 Games. J.W. Teillers of the Hague was tapped as Secretary of the Art Committee and was asked to take the lead in planning the art competition. Teillers was instrumental in convincing other countries to establish their own art committees to further promote participation in the contest.

Subdivisions

Teillers orchestrated an important change to the structure of the art competition by breaking each of the five categories—Painting, Literature, Sculpture, Music and Architecture—into subdivisions. Beginning in 1928, the Literature competition, for instance, would accept submissions and award medals for three distinct types of works: lyrics and contemplative, dramatic, and epic. Similar divisions were added for the other four categories and Teillers drafted new regulations to reflect these changes.

U.S. Participation

According to the New York Times, the United States shipped more than 100 pieces of art to the 1928 Games under the honorary chairmanship of First Lady Grace Coolidge. “A special effort has been made to bring forward the American point of view and its development in sport,” said American Federation of the Arts member Charles H. Sherrill, who also served as a judge for the Architecture competition. “Particularly is this true in the architecture exhibit, in which will appear architectural plans and water color drawings of certain buildings for indoor sports, necessitated by our winters and unknown in Europe.” (The Americans failed to medal in the art competition at the 1928 Games.)

A Success

The roughly 1,100 pieces of art submitted were displayed by country in the Amsterdam Municipal Museum. While the judges were generally unimpressed with the quality of the entries in the dramatic literature and music categories, the art competition in Amsterdam was deemed superior to the one held in Paris four years earlier. In its official review, the IOC wrote, in part, “a more successful result than that attained could hardly be expected.”

Art Competitions in Hollywood

Los Angeles Olympic Village, 1932/Getty Images

The U.S. Olympic Committee began planning the art competition for the 1932 Los Angeles Games almost three years before the start of the opening ceremonies. According to Richard Stanton’s The Forgotten Olympic Art Competitions, the art competition was the first event provided for in the USOC’s budget.

U.S. Customs Arrangement

According to Stanton, the IOC made an arrangement with the U.S. Customs Bureau to allow artwork shipped via the Panama Canal to enter free of duty or in bond. To further encourage participation, the U.S. Olympic Committee also offered to pay for transportation and insurance on the return trip. The art competition and a concurrent art exhibition were hosted in the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art. About 30 countries were represented, though more than half of the 1,145 pieces submitted were from the United States.

Large and Dull

Not everyone was enamored with the art competition. In a scathing review for the New York Times, reporter Arthur Miller referred to them “as a sort of side show for the Olympic Games.” (With over 384,000 visitors during the course of the 1932 Games, it was a well-attended side show.) “The show, on the whole, is inept, and is saved from complete mediocrity by the two rowing pictures and one boxing scene by Thomas Eakins, the boxing sculpture by Mahonri Young, and the young athletes modeled by R. Tait Mackenzie,” Miller wrote. “…Either the good painters do not paint sports or the Olympic committees do not know art.” Young would win gold in the statue division and Mackenzie would win bronze in the reliefs and medallions division of the Sculpture category.